The search for a safe and effective vaccine against the new coronavirus is underway. Frontline workers will be the first to get vaccinated in India when a vaccine becomes available, according to a senior official. “Reducing mortality and protecting frontline workers must be the first priority,” said Dr. Vinod Paul, a member of Niti Aayog and head of a panel advising the prime minister on the country’s efforts to produce and deploy the vaccine, according to Bloomberg.
“Health workers, both from the public and private sectors in rural and urban areas of India, are fighting the battle. Also, municipal workers and police officers fighting everywhere must be a priority, ”he added.
The Center plans to procure COVID-19 vaccines directly from drug manufacturers and distribute them to priority groups under a special coronavirus immunization program, official sources said, according to the news agency. PTI. Union states and territories have been asked not to chart separate procurement routes, according to reports.
The central government has already started the process of identifying some 30 million priority beneficiaries. It has demarcated four categories of people for vaccination in the initial phase: about a crore of health professionals, including doctors, MBBS students, nurses and ASHA workers, etc .; about two million front-line workers, including workers in municipal corporations, police personnel and the armed forces; about 26 million people over the age of 50; and a special group of children under 50 years of age with comorbidities and requiring specialized care.
The national vaccine distribution plan is being formulated with the assumption that limited volumes of the inoculation will be available in the first months of production, Paul said.
“Even if you gather the best capabilities, they won’t be enough. The most optimistic scenario is that it will take six months to a year to reach all of them, “he said.
India has booked around ₹50,000 crore at an estimated ₹500 per person to vaccinate the world’s second-most populous nation, Bloomberg reported earlier this month.
On pricing, Paul said it was too early to discuss costs. “We are working within parameters,” he said. “Resources will not be a limitation,” he added.
Currently, three candidate vaccines are in different phases of testing in India. Two homegrown candidate vaccines, Covaxin from Bharat Biotech and ZyCoV-D from Zydus Cadila have already started the phase II clinical trial. Another vaccine candidate, Covishield, developed by the University of Oxford, has recently started the phase III clinical trial in India.
Covaxin also received approval from the drug regulator to start the large-scale phase III clinical trial in the country. Dr Reddy’s Laboratories will soon begin phase II clinical trials of the Russian COVID-19 Sputnik V vaccine in India.
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